The Hippie Jesus Convergence

I picked up another hefty delivery of meat yesterday from one of the farmers I buy from. At various times during the year I order an entire lamb, a whole hog, or a side of beef. Today it was dozens of chickens and a few extra bundles of bacon and such. It all goes in to the freezers. The highest quality cuts become wonderful roasts or barbecue while the lesser portions are turned in to soups, stews, and stock that I pressure can in big batches. I really enjoy giving my money directly to the families that raise my food. And the quality is excellent.

As I chatted with the other customers and Farmer Craig it occurred to me that if we all lined up we would be a cartoon of the American cultural and political spectrum. Craig is a deeply religious man who lives in one of California’s rural Republican conservative strongholds. He and his wife have a special calling that compels them to take in troubled youth and provide them with a nurturing home, spiritual instruction, and practical life skills on the farm. He’s patient, earnest, and impossibly kind.

At the other end of the spectrum are the old school San Francisco lefties with “Tax the Rich” and “Keep Our Muslim Neighbors Safe” buttons who are also kind, generous, and loving – although from an entirely different perspective. In between middle-of-the-road soccer moms and at least one aging gay guy of no particular political or spiritual persuasion (cough) round out the image. Given the current political atmosphere we should all be at each other with knives. Instead, it’s all big hugs with lots of mutual respect and genuine affection.

As a nation we have multiple profound long festering overlapping predicaments that we need to come to grips with. None of the options are particularly savory. We need to roll up our sleeves and get serious. As face-to-face individuals we don’t actually have a problem with each other. But all sides of our most critical institutions are obsessed with the minutiae of their own palace intrigue. There’s a palpable reciprocal commitment by the various factions to destroy the opposition by dividing the country – at all costs. The problem is external reality is going to intervene sooner or later. This isn’t going to end well if we don’t pull together.

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Johnny

I'm an amateur architecture buff with a passionate interest in where and how we all live and occupy the landscape, from small rural towns to skyscrapers and everything in between. I travel often, conduct interviews with people of interest, and gather photos and video of places worth talking about. The good, the bad, and the ugly - it's all fascinating to me.
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20 thoughts on “The Hippie Jesus Convergence”

Virtue cannot be legislated but all sides seem to want to try it (as long as it is their ideological definition of “virtue”). We are not really individuals; we exist in communion. And it is in communion that we find humanity.

Enh, I disagree. We really are individuals. We choose to commune or not to commune. We choose with whom to commune and with whom not to commune. America is fortunate to have legislated the legal protection of the individual over the community. E pluribus Unum, you know?

When I first read this, I read “serious” as “generous.” I was so moved that I went back to read the sentence over and discovered my error! :^) But the tone of your post is one of generosity, so I still feel moved by this piece.

I suspect that the acrimony expressed on the Internet gives people the false impression that the country is about to splinter at any moment.

On a related note, Rebecca Solnit has written extensively about ordinary people from disparate backgrounds bonding together in times of disaster, and Sebastian Junger has described on more than one occasion how living through life-threatening experiences causes social bonds to strengthen. Maybe when times get tougher, we’ll see less nastiness and infighting.

That, or cable news and politicians will manage to turn the middle class into a circular firing squad, as usual.

Back in the 70s and 80s I had long hair, which my grandmother didn’t approve of. I pointed to the portrait of Jesus which had pride of place on her living room wall. “Jesus had long hair Grandma.” Pause. She’d reply, “That was the style back then.” Pause. “It’s the style now Grandma.” Pause. “Not for decent people, it isn’t.” Pause. “Grandma, Caesar and the Roman senators had short hair.” At that point she’d make a funny sound and change the topic of conversation.

Since the “news” media have become solely entertainment, they’d want you all at each other with knives. The important stories, the ones not being broadcast, are local and deeply human. The absence of leadership from this administration may effectively and ironically bring about cohesion and leadership from our neighborhoods.

I’m not so sure. The tone from the top seems to have filtered down a good bit into everyday life.

I’m involved in all kinds of community efforts and one in particular (a food cooperative!) seems to have attracted a core of white-privilege-shaming ultra lefties. Now, a food co-op is a bit of a lefty endeavor to begin with…so here we are with a circular firing squad.

The difference seems to be organized groups of any kind, which all have politics with a capital or a small “p”. What Johnny describes is a whole lot more transactional (everyone gets something they want out of the deal, or they aren’t involved) than associational where there is thought to be a shared agenda.

I love this analysis. When people are indeed engaged in a transaction where everyone gets what they need – farmer needs money, people need food – our interests are aligned. When the same group are lumped up with their church or their particular affinity groups over abstract concerns (guns, abortion, immigration…) the same people are confrontational and adversarial.

The country could be pulled together by an external threat – historically that’s typically a war. Not a small discretionary Vietnam or Afghanistan type war, but a WWII kind of war. Then again both the Revolutionary War (Loyalists vs. Rebels) and the Civil War (Yankees vs. Confederates) were Americans fighting other Americans… We’ll see.

I don’t see a civil war coming, but who knows. Maybe over constitutional rights like shotgun ownership. Ha! However, there is some serious authoritarian stuff going on with these localized (not yet real) circular firing squads.

I’m involved in all kinds of community efforts and one in particular (a food cooperative!) seems to have attracted a core of white-privilege-shaming ultra lefties. Now, a food co-op is a bit of a lefty endeavor to begin with…so here we are with a circular firing squad.

Yeah, any time an “ultra” group (regardless of what “side” they are) moves in a pack, a form of social violence tends to follow. No matter how they deny it, it always turns into a desire for power…usually to protect their “ultra views” from an imagined threat. Wars are not really needed anymore; just clashing ideologies cast in the most extreme manner possible.

The real problem, I think, is not that anyone is concerned over “abstract” concerns, it is that our society is built on confrontation and, by extent, violence (physical has given way to economic and social forms of violence, as a matter of preference) as a way to solve problems. Courtesy has gone out the proverbial window and landed on top of humility in the garbage pile. Just my thoughts.